


Getting Soft

by nwhepcat



Series: Thelma & Louise 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:43:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean should have known better than to ask for the happy ending. Set in the first winter after Sam's departure for Stanford.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting Soft

**Author's Note:**

> Some Dean/OFC sparks the plot, but for all intents and purposes, it's gen.

At first Dean thought it all had to do with Sam and Stanford and the way his brother's absence hurt all the damn time.

A long while later, when he finally realized what was happening to him, he knew that was exactly the case, only in a completely different way than he'd originally thought.

It started that first Christmas without Sam. Dean had conducted a massive campaign to convince his dad to go to Stanford and get Sam for a family holiday. It might be a Winchester style holiday, but at least they'd be together. That had been Dean's thinking, because he couldn't bear the idea of Sam being all alone in the dorm for a week because he had noplace to go.

Only when they'd gotten there, Sam was nowhere to be found. Dad expected the worst, but when he picked the lock on Sam's door, they'd entered to find his bed made with military neatness, his duffel missing, and one of Sam's ever-present lists balled up in the trash. _Turn in econ paper. Pack psych text and Merchant. Gift for Paul's parents._

"Awesome," Dean had said when Dad wordlessly handed him the paper. "He's found himself another family."

So it had turned into an extra special Winchester Christmas, with Dad staying plastered for a fair amount of the holiday week, and Dean screwing his way through a large assortment of women.

When Dean woke up on New Year's Day he had nothing more than the customary headache and sour stomach. 

It was a damn shame he didn't know at the time it would be the best morning he'd have for a long while.

***

What woke him at three the next morning wasn't his dad, but the pain. It shot through both his feet. Like a giant's hands folded around them, crushing the bones together until it was all Dean could do not to yell out. For a long time he lay in bed, dreading the thought of putting any weight on them, but after an hour he knew he wouldn't get back to sleep unless he got something to take the edge off. The Vicodin Dad had scammed was reserved for _real_ pain, requiring jagged bones poking through flesh, so Dean rummaged in the field kit for the aspirin and downed four.

They didn't seem to do anything at all, but eventually he drifted back to sleep, only to be roused with a rough hand shaking his shoulder at six. "Look sharp, son. We're heading out to Pastor Jim's. He's been looking into some things for me."

Biting back a groan, Dean swung his legs over the bed, conducting his morning rituals as quickly as he could before packing up his duffel. 

His dad watched him closely as he hobbled out to the Impala. "You hurtin'?"

While he never would have complained without prompting, Dean knew better than to insult his father's intelligence by denying it. "Yes sir. Some."

Dad frowned. "Yeah, looks like 'some.' Which one's bothering you?"

"Both."

"You went for a run yesterday. Were they bothering you then?"

"No sir."

"And nothing happened. You didn't twist anything or stumble."

"No sir."

Gesturing for the duffel, Dad said, "Let me look at those sneakers." He dug out the shoes Dean wore to go running and scowled at the rundown soles. "These are shot. Let me see the ones you've got on. Lift up a foot."

Dean leaned against the Impala, her cold metal skin making him suck in a breath. He lifted the left foot, then the right. 

"Those have got to go too," Dad said. "You should have said something."

"They weren't bothering me before," Dean said, and after looking at him intently for a moment, his dad seemed to take that as the truth. 

"We'll find an army surplus store," Dad said, leaving Dean to sit gratefully in the passenger seat while Dad went to the motel office to ask for directions.

Dad hadn't said anything about the cost, but Dean knew this was the last thing they needed right now. They were down to their last credit card, waiting for the next batch to appear at their mail drop. The one that was left had to stay uncompromised, used only for jobs.

When Dad settled back behind the wheel, Dean said, "Dad, it can wait. You want to get to Pastor Jim and besides --"

"No it can't wait," his dad declared. "A soldier takes care of his tools, and that includes your boots and your feet."

"Yes sir," Dean said. 

It wasn't easy determining the fit of shoes when Dean's feet felt like they were being crushed even when he wore nothing but socks, but eventually he left the surplus store with a pair of boots, another of shoes, some socks without holes and an old man bitching about how surplus stores used to sell actual military surplus instead of overpriced shit for campers and sportsmen. 

That bitchfest was nothing compared to the one two weeks later when he discovered Dean pulling on a third pair of socks so the boots would fit. "Goddammit, Dean," Dad shouted, despite the fact that Pastor Jim's housekeeper was working downstairs. "I've told you a million times, fuck what you _like_ , you buy the shoes that fit!"

"I did, I swear," Dean countered, despite the danger of arguing with his dad. "They fit then. But they don't feel right anymore."

That went over about as well as expected. Dean found himself dismantling, cleaning and reassembling the old man's entire arsenal. If it hadn't been for his fucked up feet, there'd probably have been a fifteen mile run on top of that, so he counted himself lucky. By the time he finished, he was fumbling every small piece he picked up, and the ache in his hands, wrists, arms and shoulders was nearly as fierce as the pain in his feet. Without complaint, he downed a handful of aspirin and a Benadryl on top of it to help him sleep, then went to bed.

If anything, he felt worse in the morning, but he knew better than to report this information to his dad. Jim took him to the church's clothes closet and let him pick out some shoes that actually fit.

They were two sizes too small for him, but they fit perfectly.

While they were there, Dean saw more of Pastor Jim than dad, who seemed to be hand-copying entire texts into his goddamn notebook. Hell, making an illuminated perfect copy, for all Dean knew. It was taking long enough. Dean kept himself as busy as he could, considering the way he felt: training, doing jobs for Pastor Jim, sparring with him while Jim made him recite Latin exorcisms. Dean pushed through the pain like a good soldier, but he knew he fought like he was phoning it in. Dad would have been all up his ass over a performance like that, but Jim just backed off his attacks and gave him concerned looks when he thought Dean wasn't looking. 

When Dad finally emerged, he looked haggard and beaten down, but he was raring to go. While Dean wished he could remind Dad that his birthday was the next day, he knew as ideas went it was a piss poor one. Jim, on the other hand, had things to say to John, though Dean was upstairs packing his duffel, so he didn't know what those things were. 

Dad's voice, however, carried just fine, at least for the part that went, "Don't need you telling me how to raise my goddamn kid." 

If Jim pointed out that Dean was almost 22 and no longer in need of raising, Dean didn't hear. In the end, nothing changed. They loaded the car up and took off before sundown. By 10 pm they were in Solon Springs, Wisconsin.

The birthday surprise that greeted him the next morning was a fresh round of pain. His whole torso hurt like someone had given him his birthday whacks with a tire iron, though the worst of it was concentrated around his hips. He found himself curled into a tight ball in bed when he awoke. It overwhelmed his body and mind to such a degree that it took him a while to realize that the pain in his feet had completely receded, and his arms and hands hurt but that was largely swallowed by the crushing pains elsewhere.

His birthday present to himself was a couple of the Vicodin from the first aid kit. It took the edge off the pain, but not the longing for his phone to ring and for it to be Sammy on the other end. Just a lousy fucking five minutes, if that's all he could have. Dean spent the day without complaint in a small-town courthouse, looking up death records and land transactions while Dad was in the library combing through old news reports. Dad hadn't said whether this was about a typical job or the epic, super-secret project Dean wasn't supposed to realize he was compiling. Dean didn't much care, he just took notes as neatly as possible while shifting in his chair or standing with his arms braced on the desk where he workeds. Every two or three hours, Dean would take a break to stand on the courthouse steps and down Vicodin with a bottle of Coke.

To Dean's surprise (brutally suppressed), Dad had remembered it was his birthday. After they finished for the day, he took Dean out for a steak dinner and a few beers. No way was Dean admitting to raiding the Vicodin stash, so he let his pace lag behind Dad's only slightly.

Which was why, when Sam did call to wish him a happy birthday, he caught Dean both asleep and epically fucked up. "Hey," he slurred into the phone when it finally registered as something he needed to answer. 

"Hey. Dean," Sam sounded like he'd been caught off-guard. But he was the one who'd called Dean. Dean frowned. Wasn't he? "I thought I was gonna have to leave a message. Are you with someone?"

"Sammmeeeeee," Dean said. "Hey, Sam. No, man, I'm not with anyone. 'S just me. You okay? Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, of course. I'm good. I'm just calling cause it's your birthday."

"Is it?" Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to concentrate.

"Huh," Sam said after a brief pause. "It still is in California, anyway. Sorry. I've got a big paper due, and it's been kicking my ass."

"You want me to come up there?" Dean asked. "Because I will. I'll kick its ass so hard--"

"It's a _paper_ , Dean. An assignment. I can handle it, I'm just saying it's eating up my time."

"Oh," Dean said lamely. "Sure."

"Sounds like you've been celebrating."

"Yeah, I guess I hit it a little hard tonight. Dad and I went out. Steak and beers."

The mention of Dad added an instant note of tension into the conversation. 

"Hey, that's great. Well, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday."

"Awesome. Well, thanks." He thought of launching into one of the things that had been left unsaid, but since there were a million of them, he couldn't untangle just one to start with. Not that any of them would change anything. "Don't be a stranger."

Sam added some meaningless noises, and they hung up. 

The next morning, Dean wasn't sure if the conversation he remembered was real or imagined or dreamed. He let go of the question fairly early, given little mental room for anything that wasn't the pain in his hips. Dad noticed and kept Dean on research duty while he hunted. Though he hated it, Dean couldn't argue with it. He spent at least half his library time looking up symptoms on medical sites. If not every road led to cancer, the ones that did were expressways. 

As if it wasn't enough that he needed to down some Vicodin to get any sleep, one morning Dean found he could barely fit into his jeans, and once he did he could hardly breathe. After trying his other two pairs, he went back to the first. It took a few deep knee bends to get them a little looser, but he still felt like the waistband would cut him in half as he tied his new hand-me-down sneakers. Jesus, he was getting soft. He'd have to get back to running and hunting whether he felt like it or not.

In the meantime, he scraped together some cash and went to the thrift shop he always passed on the way to the library. Throwing half a dozen pairs over his arm, Dean closed himself in a dressing room and tried on every single one, with no luck. If they fit in the hips, they were ridiculously loose in the waist, but if they looked like they'd work at the waist, he couldn't even get them all the way on. 

"What the everlasting _fuck?_ " he muttered as he tugged off the final pair.

Yanking his tee up to get a better look at the problem, he froze in horror at the outward curve of his hips, leading to the inward curve at his waist. "That's fucking impossible," he said. This was not how guys were shaped. This was not how _he_ was shaped. And you didn't just turn not-guy-shaped without noticing. 

Except there was no mirror in the shithole he and Dad were renting, except a cracked and mottled one the size of a paperback book. Dean always showered quickly, unless he was taking what he liked to think of as A Moment, and there was always a washcloth between him and his body (except during said Moment, but that was just his dick). Had this ... _rearrangement_ been going on the whole time he'd been having pains in his hips?

Beginning to freak, Dean stripped off his socks. Finally he realized his feet had undergone more than a change in size. They looked ... daintier. His undershorts flew off next, and his dick was still there ( _thankfuckthankfuckthankfuck_ ), surrounded by a thatch of brown with glints of gold, but the narrow line of hair that led up toward his navel like ants to a dropped cookie, that was gone. 

The t-shirt fell back around his hips in his frantic assessment of the damage, and with trepidation he pulled it off and let it drop on the pile of discarded jeans. Dean stared at himself in the mirror, his breath stuck somewhere in his chest. 

It wasn't just the widening of his hips and the change in his feet. Everything had just ... gone soft. It wasn't that his muscles had gone to fat, just that they weren't as sharply delineated. His chest and shoulders were still broad -- enough that they looked out of proportion, even with the widened hip -- but they had been smoothed out somehow. And the planes of his face -- 

_That's just fucking crazy. It's the lights in here, that's all._

Hastily he snatched up his clothes and pulled them on, stuffing his feet into his shoes without even putting his socks on first. Stumbling over the tangle of denim on the floor, he crashed hard into the door jamb of the dressing room, recovered, and hurried out of the shop. 

Refusing to believe what he'd seen, he went to another store and grabbed some jeans off the rack, more to have an excuse to look into another full-length mirror to chase away the effects of the first store's bad lighting. The effect was the same, though, and he quickly left in search of a third opinion. Again he got more evidence that his body really had changed. Practically strangling on a sob, he sat on the bench in the changing room, head in his hands, until the clerk came thumping on doors to find an empty room. Dean grabbed up a badly fitting pair and bought them, along with a belt that cinched them in at the waist and a couple of flannel shirts to camouflage the things that were happening to him.

But what the hell _was_ happening to him? 

If it had been Sam asking the same question under the same circumstances, Dean would have said, "Now that's just willful stupidity." As it was, not even Dean's strong will could keep the answer at bay for more than a couple of days. The pain subsided in his hips but moved upward into his shoulders and ribcage. For the first time it was not just bone but the soft tissues of his pecs ached as if something with inhuman strength had punched him there repeatedly. 

That was precisely when the self-indulgent bullshit stopped and he was forced to admit what was happening. Because when he reached up to smooth his hands over the fierce ache, there were small mounds he could cup in his palms. 

This time when he rummaged through the med kit he bypassed the drugs and went for an Ace bandage, winding it around his upper ribcage until it nearly cut off his breath. For good measure he layered a couple of t-shirts and one of the thrift shop flannel shirts over it. _Push them down. Hide them._ But if he were completely honest with himself, he'd have to admit part of him was hoping he could push them down, make them go away.

 _Right. Cause magical thinking always helps._ The thought actually made him laugh out loud, because what the fuck. This _was_ magical. This was fucking witchery, if he knew anything at all about how things worked. 

As it turned out he had plenty of time to think about it, thanks to Dad finishing the job and deciding to take on another in southwest Minnesota. Dean sat hunched in the passenger seat of the Impala, working it all out in his head. He was certain this whole thing started during the blur of women he'd slept with right after the Christmas trip to Palo Alto. He had a damn good idea exactly which one it was -- and not just because she was the only one he remembered that well. 

She was a massage therapist. And at first he'd thought he'd lost her with the happy endings joke, but she'd smothered her clear irritation and kept him talking. When he admitted he'd never had a real massage, she'd talked him into trying it. Though it wasn't his nature to be shy about getting naked with a member of the fairer sex, he'd felt nervous and awkward about this. Maybe it was the office she'd led him to, a cross between beaded hippydippyland and a medical office. She (and Dean couldn't for the life of him remember her name) gave him a cup of tea while she went into the massage room to set everything up.

"I've never done this before," she'd said as she showed him back into the massage room. "I mean, brought a guy back here this way."

"Well, like I said, I've never done this before, so I guess we're even." 

She smiled. "Not quite." She didn't go on to explain that, but told him to get undressed and lie on the padded table, face down. Then she left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Dean closed his eyes, barely aware of the music on the tapedeck or the Impala's rumble. Everything shifted inside his head, rearranging so that innocuous details suddenly carried enormous weight. Candlelight. Incense. Music -- not soft and new agey, but so low in volume it was more subconscious than heard. Full of drum beats and chants. Scented oil -- aromatherapy, she'd said when he asked. _Fuck_ , he'd laid himself out there naked in the midst of all this like a sacrificial lamb, and it had not even _occurred_ to him. Because he was going to get his rocks off, and that was going to help him forget that Sam had gone off to spend the holidays with some other family that fit better into his new and perfect life. 

"Champ?" his dad interrupted, startling Dean so that he bumped his head against the side window. "You okay?"

Dean must have made a noise of some kind. His throat felt full of noises -- whimpers, howls, curses -- all backed up behind a massive knot. "Must have dozed off," he said. "Guess it was a dream."

"Sing out if you want to stretch out in back, or need to stop to grab some food or hit the head. We've got a ways to go."

"It's okay," Dean lied. "I'm fine right now."

***

"How are you feeling now?" she had asked when she came back into the room. "Still nervous?"

"No." He would have turned to look at her, drink her in, but he was so relaxed he felt melted into the table.

"Good," she said. "I can do my work so much better if you're relaxed. Ready?"

Dean didn't really remember much now about what he'd said, except that he'd made that fucking happy ending joke again. Because, seriously, he never learned. 

She had only laughed, trailing a hand along his sheet-covered leg. "Don't worry, it'll be an ending you'll never forget." Folding the sheet up to his upper thighs, she took one of his feet in her hands, kneading with a slow, delicious pressure that made a moan slip from his throat. "Sweetie," she said, "I'm going to remake you from the ground up."

***

This time Dean did cry out, jolting back from the car door. 

Dad shot him a sidelong look. "I'm gonna find a place to stop. I think we could both use a break."

It was the last thing he wanted. Dean wasn't sure he'd be able to hide the new shape of his body or his red-rimmed eyes if the old man were to sit across a diner booth from him. But there was no arguing with Dad when he made an executive decision, so Dean trailed along behind him until he could veer off for the bathroom. 

The bindings weren't doing the job as well as they had at first, because -- and here was a massive non-surprise -- they had more to hold back. 

_"Tell me what you like in a girl," she'd murmured as her hands had worked the twin mounds of his ass. He had thought he'd be bare through this whole thing, but she had just draped the sheets back over his legs before she went to work here._

_His surprise had shifted his attention from her words, so "girl" hadn't pinged any warnings for him. Not then. He had laughed quietly into the strange space below his face, which was cradled in a horseshoe-shaped support. "I'm not picky," he'd said. "I like all shapes, sizes and shades of girls. Willing and eager, that's my type."_

_"Aren't you broad-minded," she'd said._

_He'd laughed like the asshole he was. "I wouldn't call 'em broads. They don't like that."_

_She hadn't reacted to that, just concentrated on some insanely blissful thing she was doing around his hipbones. "But there must be something you particularly like."_

_She'd been simultaneously asking him questions and robbing him of the ability to think or speak. But somehow Dean managed to answer her question._

_"I love a great rack. They have to be real, though. Soft." There was so little softness in his life. "I even like them just a slight bit different in size. It's hot, because it's real." He drifted for a moment or two, carried along on this current of unfamiliar sensation. Then, because he could never shut up soon enough: "Curves. That nipped in waist, then boom! -- mammary awesomeness."_

_Jesus, what an asshole he was._

All this time he'd been remembering this, Dean had been locked in a stall unwrapping the Ace bandage, assessing the damage. He was still able to cup them completely using his whole hands, but he wondered if that would be true by morning. Panicked, he wrapped them again, brutally tight, and layered back up again.

When Dean pushed his way out of the stall, he was confronted with a wild-eyed reject from the grunge era who might or might not be in the wrong restroom. It took him several skittering heartbeats to realize that he was seeing his own reflection above the sink. Bracing himself on the porcelain, he leaned in to study his face. His bone structure was unchanged -- he knew by now he'd be well aware when that was happening -- but there were changes already. His face seemed just a little bit rounder, its lines softened. Where he should have had two days' worth of stubble, there was none. His eyelashes, which Dean had always thought were too girly as it was, were now a mascara commercial of length and thickness. But that wasn't the worst of it, not by a longshot. 

Jesus God, he looked -- he looked so much like his mom. How could he even go out there and make his dad look at this face?

Turning the taps on full blast, he scrubbed at his face as viciously as he'd rewound the bindings on his chest. As if water could have any effect on what was happening -- what had already happened. 

As he reached for the paper towel dispenser, the door banged open and his dad burst through. Dean started at him stupidly, water dripping from his nose and chin, as Dad took him in. 

"I was about to ask if you fell in, but I guess I already got my answer. Shake a leg, son. Food's already on the table. I ordered you the fried chicken. Waitress says it's the best thing they've got."

Dean finished wiping at his face and followed his dad to the dinner that awaited.

***

He expected the third degree, or at the very least to be told to stop the fucking moping. But instead Dad talked about the food -- the waitress had told the truth about the chicken; it was damn fine. He told Dean about a guy he'd known in the Marines who came from around here -- Dean wasn't even sure where "here" was, too wrapped up in his freakout. The story was the kind he'd never heard his father tell; there was no lesson or warning worked into the narrative. Just some memories about a guy Dad hadn't thought of in years. He wished Sam could hear this -- he'd never believe it otherwise.

Dean managed to eat some of his dinner, but the waitress finally gave up on him and packed the leftovers into a styrofoam box already heaped with extra biscuits. He put them away on the back seat of the Impala, where they perfumed the air in the car, but didn't stir his hunger. All Dean could think about was what came next. 

Once she had urged him to turn onto his back, she'd worked his shoulders, collarbone and sternum, murmuring soothing nothings as Dean blissed out. At least he'd thought they were nothings, but now he wonders if they were incantations. He'd been so far gone at that point that she could have been hog calling for all the impression it made. But he remembered her hands. They spent a long time on his chest, giving him an elaborate lesson (supplemented with tongue and teeth) about the sensitivity of guy nipples. Then she'd moved on to running her hands along the line of his throat, her touch as soothing as a warm shower after a hunt in frigid weather. Then face and scalp. He could only imagine how it would feel when the planes and angles of his face began shifting and refining.

_Remake you from the ground up._

Except for that one last detail. The happy goddamn ending.

"Stop the car!" Dean blurted, hurriedly rolling down the window to get some air on his face. 

His dad pulled onto the gravel shoulder and Dean threw open the door, emptying his stomach. 

***

Dad found them a motel as soon as Dean stopped retching his guts out. He even let Dean sleep in, which had to be an all-time first. As soon as Dean was awake, though, Dad delivered the news: He'd been asked to lend a hand with a poltergeist job just over the state line in South Dakota, and was leaving Dean here to start the research on the original job.

"Shouldn't be long," his dad told him as he gathered supplies for the new hunt. "All the groundwork's been laid, it's just it'll take two men to handle this thing. I'll be back as soon as I can."

 _It'll take two men._ "Okay, sure." Maybe this was it. Dad _had_ seen the emergence of Mary Winchester's features in their son, and he was bailing before it got worse. Dean couldn't blame him; he'd do the same if he could.

Dad paused at the door. "You call if you need something, son. You hear me?"

"Yes sir," Dean said without hesitation, just as he'd been trained to do.

***

The sound of the Impala's engine had no sooner faded than some kind of clarity settled over Dean. The realization hit him that he had to _do_ something about this, not stand there like a fucking deer in the headlights watching his oncoming doom. He'd already lost too much time to denial and then panic. The presence of his old man played a not inconsiderable part in that, he knew, but that didn't change the fact that he'd wasted a lot of time. 

He speed dialled Pastor Jim, breathing something close to a prayer of thanks when he got him on the second ring. Cutting the pleasantries short, Dean told him, "Dad and I are working separate jobs at the moment, and I've run into something that looks like it could be heavy spellwork. You know any hunters who have experience with that? It's kind of urgent."

He wrote down the name and number of Bobby Singer. The name sounded familiar, as does the rough voice that greeted him.

"Mr. Singer," he began, "I'm Dean Winchester, John Win--"

"I know who you are," Singer growled. "What, too good for 'Uncle Bobby' now that you're a grown-ass man?"

 _Now_ Dean remembered. Gruff ol' Uncle Bobby and that demented dog of his, the both of them in the bark category in the bark vs. bite faceoff. And that junkyard of his, a ten-year-old's dream. The memory made him grin. "Hell, I thought it might make you feel old."

"Don't need you for that, kid. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Dad and I are working on separate jobs, and I've kinda stumbled into something that sounds like it could be weapons-grade magic. Pastor Jim told me you know your stuff."

"Dunno if that's true, but I got a helluva library. What's your situation?"

The phone nearly slipped through his sweaty grip. "It's not my situation. It's this guy I ran into. I said I'd try to help him."

"Well, let's have it, son. What's his problem?"

"He's ... turning into a girl. A woman," he corrected himself. 

There was a pause, then Bobby repeated, "Turning. Not turned overnight or _shazzam_ , in the blink of an eye."

"Right. It's been going on a while."

Bobby grunted. "He have any theories on when this started, or what could've set this in motion?"

"Yeah, he does," Dean said. "There was this woman he slept with, and he might've pissed her off without meaning to." Because that was what could happen when you were a cheerfully clueless dick.

"And you think maybe she was a witch?"

"Well, from what the guy said there were candles and incense and some kind of smelly tea."

Dean didn't like the sound of the nothing that was coming down the line, or the fact that there was such a lot of it. Finally Bobby asked, "Did she get any nail clippings or a snippet of hair from you?"

Dean closed his eyes, thinking of a condom and its disappearance (which he hadn't even noticed, not in the state he'd been in) after the happy ending. He palmed the phone for a moment, trying to get his breathing under control, then he raised it and spoke. "There might've been body fluids."

The pause that provoked was even longer than the previous one. Dean's heart sank.

"Do you have a line on who this woman is?"

"Uh, no," Dean said. "He uh, uh --" _Think, goddammit!_ "He met her at a rave or something. Some big one, out in California. There were people there from all over." Sounded better than _I have no idea where I was at the time._

Bobby _hmmmm'd_ over the line. "Well, you found yourself a helluva case there, Dean. I'm gonna have to crack open some books, see what I can find. Can your friend hang tight while I dig around, maybe make some calls?"

Dean laughed darkly. "He hasn't got much choice, has he?"

"Guess not. Well, hang in there, and I'll see what I can come up with. You say hello to your daddy when you see him."

"I will. Thanks, Bobby."

"Sure thing. And you come out and visit sometime, Dean. Last time I saw you, you didn't even come up to a toad's nuts."

"I'll do that."

Dean knew how research went, especially when it came to musty books without indexes. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he went out for a huge breakfast, then found a barbershop and got his somewhat shaggy hair (nothing like Sam's, but starting to brush his collar) chopped short. The barber was one of those who didn't like kibbitzing while he was working, Dean guessed, because almost the whole time the man had Dean's chair facing away from the mirror. 

When the barber finally whirled his chair back to face his reflection, Dean was struck anew at how much he'd changed. And for the first time it occurred to him that it wasn't just the fact that he was being turned into a girl -- it was that Dean was being erased. The face beneath the short cut was more a girl's face than a guy's, and the hand wasn't covered by the plastic cape looked slender and delicate. Not the broad, rough hand he was used to.

The barber scowled. "You don't like it?"

"What?" Dean recovered himself. "No, it's fine." He tipped the guy twice as much as he should have and headed out of the shop. 

He should probably hit the library, he thought, and do some of the preliminary work Dad had left in his hands. But the thought of his dad's return filled him with panic. By that time there would be no hiding what Dean was becoming. The soldier that Dad had molded in his image would be gone, and in his place would be a girl whose face bore too strong a resemblance to the woman Dad had lost. How could Dean not be a liability then? He was no longer certain of his strength, and he hadn't thought to test it. But worse than that, how could Dad stand the constant reminder of a life he'd lost?

He walked back to the motel and gathered up his shit, then hotwired a car and aimed it toward Chicago. 

***

By the time Dean was even halfway to Albert Lea, his throat was on fire. It hurt like hell even to swallow. Pulling off the highway at a truck stop, he gassed up the car and bought every kind of throat lozenge they had with the money Dad had left with him. All he had left was enough for a cheap motel and maybe a meal. He'd have to get more somehow, but that was beyond his capabilities right now.

Another thirty miles down the road, his cell rang. Dean turned off the music he'd had cranked up to drown out his thoughts and picked up the phone. The caller ID read Singer Salvage. 

"Hey, Bobby. What's the news?" His voice sounded funny to him, and felt like it was forced through a straw lined with broken glass.

"Still working on it, kid. I've got some calls out, and _they're_ working on it. How's your client holding up?"

"Client? _Oh._ About like you'd expect."

With an abruptness that took him off guard, Bobby asked, "Those car noises I'm hearin'?"

Dean nearly ran off the road at that, and then there were muffled noises on the other end of the line followed by, " _Dean._ " It was his dad's voice.

"Dean, answer me." This wasn't the tone of voice he was used to hearing his dad's orders in, but there was something familiar about it.

"Yes sir." 

"Where are you now, son?"

There was no question whatsoever that Dean would answer him. "I-90, going east. Coming up on Fairmont."

"Are you headed to Pastor Jim's?"

Dean laughed, which felt and sounded like it was pushed through a cheese grater. "God, no."

"Listen to me, Dean," Dad continued in this strange voice. "I want you to stop somewhere in Fairmont. Our SOP for emergency situations. How about you tell me what that is."

Finally it occurred to Dean what was familiar about that tone of voice. He's heard it on TV and in movies, when characters are trying to talk someone off a ledge. 

"Son," Dad prompted, and the word made Dean's gut twist.

"First motel listed in the phone book. Under the name Jim Rockford."

"Good, Dean. That's good. I want you to go there and wait for me."

"Yes sir."

"I'll be there as soon as I can." 

Dean thumbed the phone off and dropped it on the passenger seat, all at once feeling completely defeated.

***

He did exactly as he was told, of course. Being remade from the ground up did not include removal of the instinct to follow John Winchester's orders. 

_Dad knows._ It was the only thought in his head, but it ricocheted around in his head like a Yosemite Sam pistol shot until it seemed to fill every space. Dad had been right there with Bobby, so he _knew_. 

***

Somehow Dean managed to get himself a room and stash his things there, then he ditched the stolen Honda in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart and made the freezing walk back to the motel. It was hard to tell at first whether his head ached from the cold and his lack of a hat, or if the next phase of the rebuilding project was getting underway. By the time he made it back to his room, he fumbled the key three times before he managed to get it open.

If he were this cold after a hunt, he'd take a shower to warm up, but the thought of taking his clothes off and unwinding the strapping around his chest was more than he could stomach. Without removing his coat, Dean wrestled off his new boots, caked with snow. Once he'd left them by the door he padded to the far side of the room, his worn socks looking oversized and ludicrous on his feet, like the grubby little pixie shoes of a welfare elf.

Pulling the puke-patterned bedspread around his shoulders, Dean settled onto the bed farthest from the door, sitting with his feet drawn in close and his arms around his knees. He was out of the little stash of Vicodin pills he'd pocketed, which was a bitch because he could feel the headache ramping up along with the sting of his skin from the sudden shift in air temp. His whole fucking skull hurt, right down to his teeth.

Not too much after that, he heard a light, sharp pair of knocks at the door, then the key working in the lock. Dean's whole body tensed in the expectation of Dad ripping him a new one for disobeying and taking off. Instead, his dad gave him a long look and said softly, "Hey, Champ. How are you doing?" 

Dean couldn't look at him. "I figured Bobby would tell you how I'm doing. Didn't he call you after the first time I talked to him?"

"No, son." 

Dean couldn't remember the last time his dad had talked to him in that tone: quiet and soothing. Before his mom died, he was fairly sure. 

"I was already there. I got in touch with him for the same reason you did."

Dean blinked. "You knew." His own voice sounded odd to him too. 

His dad approached Dean the same way he'd come near a wounded creature, slow and easy. "I ain't blind, son."

"Better start easing that word out of your vocabulary, Dad."

"You're my son. That won't change." He settled on Dean's bed, near his feet, angled sideways so he could meet Dean's skittish gaze.

Averting his eyes, Dean said, "Bobby didn't tell me much. Has he found anything at all?"

Dad let out a long breath. "I wanted to be the one to tell you, and not over the phone."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. His ring, he noticed, was gone, slipped off his finger unnoticed. "That sure sounds like _Woo hoo, we found a cure_ to me."

"He's still making calls and digging up what he can, but he has had experience with transformations of this type. I won't lie to you, Dean. You deserve the truth. Bobby said it's a curse, and a pretty powerful one. If this witch had wanted to teach you a lesson or throw a scare into you, you would have woken up the next morning and you'd have been a female, and it would've been over in a few days. This kind of thing -- slow, with the shifting of muscle and bone and the pain that goes with it -- this is deep. He thinks it's permanent. Though he's still on it, I think we need to hope for the best, but prepare for it to be permanent."

All at once Dean's face felt numb, just like it had when he'd been walking back from ditching the car, before the pain from the cold and the transformation set in. No words would come to him at all.

His father's voice dragged him back, more commanding but not sharp. "Stay with me, Dean." He seized Dean by the wrist. "Let's take care of first things first. The pain Bobby talked about -- you've been having that." It wasn't a question; he'd seen Dean's discomfort when this all started. At Dean's nod, he asked, "How bad?"

"It's bad." Before his dad could scowl at the vague response, he added, "It's a nine, easy. And you know my scale -- ten is reserved for watching a rugaru eat my liver. I've been stealing your Vicodin, that's how bad."

"There is no damn need to steal pain meds in this family, Dean. If you need something, all you have to do is say so."

"Yeah," Dean said on a breath. "I was scared."

"Not of me?"

"No. Of what was happening -- _is_ happening. Admitting it scared the shit out of me."

"How far has this progressed?"

Dean's hands clenched with no conscious intention. "Almost as far as it can." This would have been the point where he'd have given his father a meaningful look, if he could stand to meet his eyes at all. "Let's just say if I wanna --" Dean's throat squeezed tight against the next words -- "write my name in the snow one last --" And then his throat closed to a pinhole, so narrow nothing could escape but a keening sound that Dean cut off as quickly as he could.

Before it had even died away, Dad had moved closer, pulling him into a bear hug. "I've got you, Dean. You're gonna weather this." His breath moved over Dean's newly-chopped hair as he spoke. "You're a tough kid." 

Dean refused to cry, but he grabbed a fistful of his father's shirt as if it were the only thing keeping him from being swept out to sea. 

After a long moment, his dad pulled back just enough to put his hands on Dean's shoulders at the base of his neck. "I've watched friends of mine lose pieces of themselves to guns and bombs, and I've met guys since who lost them long ago. It didn't make them any less than they'd been, not unless they let it. You're more than your dick, Dean, even though you let it do the thinking for you more often than you ought to."

Though he might've thought that was funny under any other circumstances, all Dean managed was a sour twist of his lips.

"You have every right to your feelings, son. But that right ends at the point where you start giving up. Are we clear on that?"

Letting out a long, shaky breath, Dean nodded. "Yes sir."

" _Good._ " Dad released him. "All right then. What's going on right now? Are you in pain now?"

Nodding, he said, "Yeah. My head." 

"Are you at nine?"

"Not yet, but it's been ramping up. It's maybe a six."

Dad stood abruptly. "I'll get the kit." 

As Dad put on the jacket he'd shed, Dean stared at the hands curved over his knees. Long, slender fingers, ringless. He couldn't shove aside an image of Dad just getting behind the Impala's wheel and peeling out of the parking lot, leaving Dean behind forever. Just like Sam had left them both. He heard the muffled thump through the motel room door, but he'd spent enough of his life in and around that car that he knew it was the trunk, not the driver's door. A few seconds later his dad was back in the room with the medic's kit.

As he opened it on the other bed, dad asked, "You think you need the Vicodin, or can you start with something a little less heavy-duty?"

"You can cut me loose," Dean said. He'd had no idea this was going to emerge from his mouth.

"What?"

"If you want to hunt without me. I mean, if there's no curing this --"

Dad turned from the med kit. "Stop talking nonsense, Dean. I'm not leaving you behind."

His eyes stinging, Dean said, "I'll be a liability."

"Bullshit. I trained you. I know you're a damn fine hunter, and I know some women hunters who'd kick your ass for suggesting you wouldn't be as good because of this. You've got a steady hand, a sharp eye and a good head on your shoulders. Last I looked, women had that same equipment."

Something swelled in Dean at this praise from his father, as fiercely delivered as a quick _Pull your head out of your ass, I know you can do better._

Dad tossed a bottle of pills toward Dean. "Here, give these a try. They'll do more good at a six than a Vicodin will at a nine."

Dean opened the bottle and shook out a couple of pills as his dad went for the bathroom to fill a plastic cup with tap water. He downed them dry and chased them with the water his dad brought him. 

"I can see her when I look in the mirror," Dean said. "This hasn't even finished yet, but I can, so I know you do too." He didn't have to say who _she_ was. He fidgeted with the empty cup, his vision wavering with unshed tears. "How can you stand that?"

Crouching down beside Dean's bed, his dad reached out and laid a hand on the scruff of Dean's neck. "Listen to me, Dean." His tone was firm but not harsh. "I've seen your mom in you since before you could walk and talk. The same goes for your brother. It's not some kind of torture for me. There've been plenty of times it was the only thing that got me through."

"Really?"

"Really. It's hard to tell sometimes, I know. But those nights would be so much worse if I didn't have you and your brother."

Dean wasn't sure if it was his own blurry vision, but it seemed Dad had tears in his eyes too.

***

The headache descended full force later that night, and despite the pain meds, it was the worst the curse had produced, progressing beyond the usual nine to rugaru level. It lasted two full days, during which he was curled up into a tight ball in bed. Dad brought soup and Vicodin and coffee throughout the days, otherwise quietly engaged but present.

As the pain reached its peak the night of the second day, Dean thought couldn't see how someone could hurt this bad without dying from it. _I am dying. RIP, Dean Winchester._ A groan poured from him, so loud his dad abandoned his journal and crouched by Dean's bed, putting a hand on his head.

"Tell me what's going on, son."

"Oh god, Dad, it hurts. I'm dying."

"No, Dean, you're not. I've got you, you're going to be okay."

" _Dean_ is all but gone," he snapped, and the voice that came out of him was fierce, but it was a girl's voice.

"Changed," Dad said firmly. "Not gone. Not dead."

"Fuck!" Dean shouted, as much in response to his dad as to the pain in his head. He thrashed in the tangled nest of sheets and bedspread.

Dad moved onto the bed, settling against the headboard and pulling Dean up to huddle against his chest. He stroked Dean's head as he held him against his body, pinning his arms. "Shhhh," he murmured into Dean's hair. "Hold on, champ. This is the worst of it, then you'll be through it."

But it wasn't. There was the happy fucking ending, and the idea of this kind of pain tearing through his groin scared him so much he thought he might go for the Impala's trunk and blow his brains out if he wasn't so fucking crippled with _this_ pain. 

"I can't do this, Dad," he muttered wetly into his father's shirt. "I can't man up and be one of your war heroes. I'm not ... I'm not ..."

"Shhhhh. It's all right."

"i can't live up to this. I couldn't before."

"Just be still." Dad's hand kept moving rhythmically over Dean's short hair. "Let yourself get some rest."

As he kept stroking Dean's head, the headache began to unclench and despite his reluctance to let go, Dean eventually fell asleep.

***

When he awoke, Dean was curled at the bottom half of the bed, while his dad was canted over sideways across the head of the bed, dead to the world.

Dean was almost afraid to take stock of his condition, but it finally filtered through that the headache was gone and his dick was still attached. He also had to piss like a racehorse. Considering he was still dressed, the idea of going out and actually writing his name in the snow did run through his mind. On the other hand, sweat slicked his skin beneath the clothes and winter jacket he'd slept in, and the whole process of going outside and behind the motel instead of a few steps away seemed inordinately complicated. 

Shedding his jacket onto the floor, Dean headed for the bathroom and aimed his stream into the toilet bowl, a morning ritual he'd performed for more than twenty years without thought. _Stupid thing to get all moody about._

As he washed his hands afterward, he saw nothing in the mirror but the face of a girl, a delicacy in the cheekbones and jawline that hadn't been there before (more echoes of his mom). Smooth skin, still dusted with freckles, even over his embarrassingly (less so now) lush lips. His short hair, sticking up every which way from sleep, actually went with his new features. Though he normally liked long hair on a girl, he'd give a chick who looked like him a second look, definitely. 

There was so much wrong with that thought that he turned away from the mirror. The idea of wearing these sweat-grimed clothes a moment longer was the only thing that urged him to peel them off and get in the shower. He turned on the faucet to get the hot water going and started unwinding the sweaty wrap from around his chest. 

He gasped when it was done. They were big. Not Pamela Anderson (post-surgical) big, but they did qualify as a rack. They were slightly irregular, too, what Dean would regard as a charmingly unmatched set -- on someone else, that was.

After a moment of fiddling with the faucet, he stepped under the spray. Though his usual routine was to use his bare hands to soap up, this time he grabbed a scratchy motel washcloth to keep between himself and the unfamiliar planes of his new body. It felt good to strip off the greasy sweat he'd built up through the ordeal of the last couple of days. Standing upright without his head feeling like it would split open was another thing he could get used to. 

Once he'd stepped out and dried off, it occurred to Dean that he had no interest in pulling on the funky clothes he'd been wearing. Poking his head out of the bathroom door, he saw that Dad was up and looking reasonably awake. 

"Uh, Dad?" he called. "Mind handing my duffel in here?"

"Sure. You hungry?"

"Fuck yeah," Dean said fervently. He stepped behind the door as Dad approached, reaching for the duffel. The strangeness of this newfound modesty around his dad struck him. The way they've lived all these years and the small spaces where they've done so had made all the Winchesters impervious to bodily embarrassment -- well, except for the night Dean waited for his first massage.

The last time it took Dean this long to get dressed, he had a couple of broken bones. The only jeans he had that fit remotely well were sweaty and gross, so it took some dancing and swearing to get a pair on, if unzipped. He pulled on a couple of shirts then studied as much of himself as he could in the mirror over the sink. Dean's new form was pretty obvious under the tee, even with the flannel layer. 

Heaving a sigh, Dean emerged from the bathroom. "I'm gonna need more Ace bandages."

"You're gonna need a bra," his dad answered.

"Oh hell no."

HIs father just looked at him with that _You'll see I'm right_ expression, but Dean's next complaint cut off any actual comment.

"And I can't get my fucking jeans zipped."

"Lie down and try it." 

Dean threw him a skeptical look, but it was worth a shot, so he lay across the bed that wasn't a tangled mess of sheets and went to work on the stubborn zipper. It took about one _Shit!_ or _Sonofabitch!_ per inch of zipper, but he finally got all but the last inch or so. Panting on the bed, he said, "I don't think I'm gonna be able to put my shoes on." Then, outraged, he demanded, "Are you _laughing_?"

Bending to pick up Dean's boots at the door, his dad said, "I thought I was doing a decent job of stifling."

"Well, you're not."

His dad came to the bed holding the boots by the laces in one hand, extending the other to Dean. "I think you lost this." He dropped the ring into Dean's palm.

"Hey, thanks." Dean tried it on his first and middle fingers before deciding on the index finger as the better fit.

Dad had one of Dean's feet braced against his thighs as he laced the boot. "Your mother used to sound the same way when she was trying to get into jeans that were too snug. That's what made me laugh."

Though Dad said this in an easy tone of voice, it hit Dean hard. This, in all his memory, was the first time he'd ever heard his dad laugh about some reminder of Dean's mom. It raised a hard lump in his throat.

Dad lowered Dean's newly booted foot and began wrestling with the other. "She used to go through this a couple or three days a month, and damn, she'd get pissed off when I laughed."

All at once the implications of _two or three days a month_ sank in for them both, and there was a silence that was awkward as hell before Dad said, too-heartily, "Think you can handle a trip to Wal-Mart before you eat breakfast? Grab some jeans that work a little better?"

Carefully easing himself off the bed, Dean said, "I'm not gonna be _able_ to eat breakfast without a trip to Wal-Mart."

***

It ended with a bang, not a whimper.

In another miraculous turn of events, Dean's dad gave them both a couple of days off to recover from the brutal pain of the curse's onset. The second evening, he and dad were watching some crapfest sci-fi flick on the motel cable, a few beers into the night. Dean was sprawled on his bed in boxer briefs and a worn tee -- though the girl jeans were a definite improvement over being locked in a denim iron maiden, he still preferred lounging in his own stuff. 

Dean couldn't remember this ever happening -- watching TV with his dad -- not unless they were watching a news report that had a whiff of something supernatural. Sure, he could remember Dad passing out in front of the tube, but that was another thing entirely. He got the feeling his dad wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He was mostly quiet, even during scenes so ludicrous that Dean and Sam would have been hooting themselves sick. Dean made a few jokes about the movie, but he couldn't get much of a rise out of his audience, so he drifted off before the monster got killed.

The dream was waiting for him.

He was asleep in the dream too, at least at the beginning. A succubus rode him, pressing his shoulders into the mattress as she enveloped him in her heat. She teased him with her tongue and teeth, sucking vivid bruises on his flesh, toying with his nipples (swollen nubs on flat plains, not summits of substantial peaks as they were now), tugging at his hair, bringing him to the brink and retreating so many times he finally begged to come. When she finally allowed his release, it triggered a chain of climaxes, like an electrical storm so fierce each new peal of thunder boomed before the previous one had died away. 

Each orgasm was accompanied by -- if not prompted by -- a different woman's face and body. There were waitresses he'd slept with, bar girls he'd had in cars, girls he'd had fleeting fantasies of as they walked past him on the street in micro shorts and spaghetti strap tops. Girls he'd never seen in person: Busty Asian Beauties Chun Hei, Keiko, Paloma, Meliame, Thanh. Girls he'd seen in movies or on TV: J-Lo, Michelle Yeoh, Halle Berry, Marisa Tomei, Lucy Liu, Jeri Ryan, the renegade slayer chick on _Buffy_ , Ginger _and_ Mary Ann.

There was no refractory period between girls, which was what made his dream self certain it was a succubus. His dick was hard through the entire succession of women, almost unbearably sensitive as he came down from one peak of pleasure and immediately began the climb to the next. It wasn't _Wham, bam, thank you ma'am_ as much as _Wham, bam, thank y--, wham, bam, thank y--wham, bam._

And each orgasm was convulsive, a shuddering, pulsing release, as if he'd gone without for months between each instead of seconds. He cried out so many times with the force of his climax that his throat became raw and his voice cracked with his shouts.

Once the succubus was finished, an incubus had a go at him. This time there was no slideshow of faces and bodies; a hood was roughly pulled over Dean's head. Somehow this made him harder than the parade of partners. He was lifted and penetrated in a variety of positions as if he were a stick figure doll made of twisted pipe cleaners, and each release tore through him more ferociously than the last. Eventually the climaxes melted together in one endless rolling orgasm, until he had screamed himself hoarse and become a mindless animal of pure sensation, knotted pleasure/pain so intense his back bowed with it.

He was lying on his back, the incubus beneath him and inside him, when he felt the touch of cool, slicked hands on his fevered skin. Dean could smell the minty lotion the witch had used on him during the massage and knew it was her hands moving up his quivering thighs. They weren't kneading his muscles but brushing slow, spidery strokes as she'd done toward the end of his massage on that night. She feathered her fingers along the skin of his lower belly, humming tunelessly. Dean moaned, and even that small noise felt like glass in his throat. 

The witch lifted the hood from his face, rubbing gently at Dean temples and combing her fingers through his hair. "You want it, don't you, baby?" she whispered.

As he sucked in his lower lip, he could taste his own tears and sweat and come on his skin. He drew in a hitching breath and said, "Yes. God, please, yes."

She took him in her hand then, and with three slip-sliding strokes he was coming again, the force of it beyond even what the incubus had coaxed from him. He screamed soundlessly as his back arched, falling and falling and falling as the incubus bucked into him from below and the witch bent over him to press a gentle kiss just above the thatch of Dean's hair.

And then he awoke.

The television was still going, an infomercial playing silently. The lights in the room blazed. Dean lay sprawled on the bed in the tee and boxers, both of which were soaked through, as well as the sheets twisted below him. The reek of sex filled the room, like seventy thousand jizz-coated socks pressed into a hamper.

Though Dean knew full well this was the end of it, the completion of the curse, he slipped a hand down into the wet boxers and touched the spot that she had kissed in the dream, then moved farther down to discover the absence he had been dreading. Dean made no attempt yet to explore the newly shaped equipment the witch had given him; all he could bear to do just now was note what was lacking.

He pulled his hand back, now covered in his own cloudy fluids. Wiping it across his t-shirt, he found no dry patch there to transfer his semen. Dean rolled out of bed then, legs unsteady as he started for the bathroom. Stumbling into the end of his dad's bed, he saw that the bed was rumpled from their TV watching, but it hadn't been slept in. The sun was spearing through the slit between the curtains, and it slanted across the empty bed. 

_That's it, Dad couldn't take it after all._

Too numb to do more than acknowledge this fact, he staggered into the bathroom and started the shower. If there was anything worse than waking up covered head to toe in jizz, he supposed it would be managing to get your own self pregnant with it. He wanted it _off_ him before it crept into any newly formed spaces.

Dean scrubbed himself with a brutal briskness, three times head to toe. The only thing that stopped him from going another round was the suspicion his legs weren't going to hold him up much longer. Managing to dry off without actually looking at his body, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a fresh tee from his duffel, then collapsed onto his dad's empty bed, staring at the tangled mess of his own. He hated the idea of the maid stumbling onto the mass of bedding, wondering if it would be uncool to carry the whole pile back behind the motel and make a bonfire of it tonight. He'd never been seized with the urge to launder his own sheets in a motel before, but this might be the first time.

That was as far ahead as he could manage to think. Hunting without his family seemed more like a protracted suicide than a way of life. 

Dean reached for his cell on the nightstand to try Bobby Singer again. The phone sat on top of a sheaf of papers that wasn't there the night before. Picking them up, he saw his dad's familiar scrawl.

 _Son: I'm in the next room, #107. Call or knock if you need anything, or when you're up and around. Dad. PS: Sign these._ Beneath the note lay a few credit card applications. 

In the neat block printing that was such a contrast to his handwriting, his dad had filled in the blanks for name, address and the rest. _Ann Wilson. Suzi Quatro. Tess Turbo. Alice Cooper._ The last one made him laugh out loud.

Picking up the pen his dad had left by the note, he signed his fake names to all the applications. Then he hit his dad's number on the speed dial.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my anonymous prompter at the Hoodie Time comment fic meme, who gave me this to work with: _A run in with a witch leads to Dean slowly turning into a girl. Physically, Dean's pretty sore and his joints hurt as his body changes into a female body. Worse than the physical pain is the pain of looking in the mirror and basically seeing his mother looking back at him. He's pretty sure that John sees the same thing and worries about his father pushing him away. I'd really love a scene where John comforts Dean about his changed body and his fears about looking like Mary. Gen or John/Dean._


End file.
